An Open Letter to President Gore

Your Excellency:

I am frightened. Very frightened.

Because I have seen the trailer for your classic film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Your cinematic skills taught me that the future is one of “hundreds of millions of refugees”, fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, nuclear disasters, and terrifying PowerPoint slides – all occurring within seven seconds.

You see, unlike you and me, most people do not know that ten of the hottest years ever were within the last fourteen years. Yes, that simple fact is too abstract for the masses of weak minds to understand – which is why I am glad that you mentioned it. But perhaps you should have illustrated that point by mentioning how the wettest ten hours all day happened to be in the last twelve hours? Or perhaps you should have used some simple sports analogy; e.g.., Baby Ruth’s (or whatever her name was) most home runs were in her third, fifth, and sixth or whatever seasons. What were the odds of that happening?

And yet I am concerned. Along with you, President Gore, I weep for our planet and how it has been raped. Just dragged in the bushes and raped! Repeatedly raped. In every orifice and in every way, in and out, in and out, in and out, raped, raped, raped and raped. With open sores in contact with putrid bodily fluids, and with violent screams of suffering and impending death, our planet, our lovely lovely planet, is now covered with hideous scars and is permanently disfigured, with its internal organs mutilated beyond any hope of recovery. Mr. President, I understand that, and I thank you for illustrating it so well.

But back to the trailer. Thank you for mentioning that the hottest year ever was 2005. Dammit, why don’t more people listen to you? We both know, that without the interference of humans, there would be no hottest year. All years would be equal. Just as all people would be equal without the right-wing religious zealots who stole your presidency. Yes, my President, you too were raped – just like Earth itself. And that is why you can empathize with the planet. Basically, you and Earth are feminine beings whose dignity has been violated. And believe me, I can sympathize with that.

But back to the trailer. At the 41^st second, you speak truth to power: “The scientific consensus is that we are causing global warming.” But, with all due respect, Mr. President, you forgot to mention the logical solution. Perhaps this is because you feel guilty about having children? Well, for the rest of us, there should be and must be mandatory human extinction to save the planet. No more breeding. Ever. Humans will never be able to foul this beautiful planet again.

But back to the trailer. The before-and-after pictures of Patagonia and Kilimanjaro with and without snow cover are startling. And deathly frightening. I, for one, have never seen any patch of land covered with snow – and then without snow! The juxtaposition of these landscapes made me violently ill, as I am sure it also made you violently ill. I vomited my cauliflower-and-tofu, Mr. President – and since your diet is just like mine, I know what a mess it must have been when you saw those pictures, because, with all due respect, Mr. President, your appetite looks much larger than mine.

But back to the trailer. You say that “temperature increases are occurring all over the world”. I verified this phenomenon just today, in fact, when the temperature rose an astounding ten degrees between breakfast and lunch! And yes, I too would describe that as “the biggest crisis in the history of this country”, just as you do in your movie!

But the money quote is when you point at a white shape and state that “if this were to go, sea levels world-wide would go up twenty feet”. And then, just like that, Florida, Shanghai, and Calcutta all change colors! And the “World Trade Center Memorial would be under water”! And then you show people in New Orleans and then an ice avalanche, and by then, I was completely petrified by amazement, fear, disgust, and loathing.

Mr. President, I am a very busy professor, swamped with responsibilities and burdens, and my hectic schedule leaves no time to see your movie. But that will not stop me from incessantly demanding that everyone I know (least of all my students!) see it several times. And I will make certain that they know why we are in such peril (humans, capitalism, Zionism), and what solutions are needed (human extinction, scientific socialism, and the destruction of the Zionist Entity).

Mr. President, your credibility is at a zenith, and your sharp and humane prescriptions for our planet must not be ignored. Our choice is simple: Listen to you, or suffer. And as much as I think we deserve the latter, we owe it to ourselves to follow the former.

Respectfully Yours,

Professor Peter Alan Kurgman, PhD, PhD, PhD

P.S. Unlike many other people, I still admire your observation that "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States." I wonder if you will clarify this in your movie with a statement like, “Regardless of the inevitable climatic devastation that you saw over the last ninety minutes, just remember that the worst thing we can do is to alienate Saudi Arabia.” I love you, Mr. President.